Music – Page 8 – Cubilone's Dimension

REVIEW: NORWEGIAN WOOD

Some memorable quotes from this book:

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”

…

“Letters are just pieces of paper,” I said. “Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish.”

…

“Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that.”

Murakami was born in 1949. Like Terry Pratchett, who passed away some days ago. Like my father. What would it be like to have Terry Pratchett or Haruki Murakami as your dad?

The protagonist was also born in 1949 and serves as our 20-year-old guide through the Japan of way back when: most of Norwegian Wood takes places in Tokyo and Japan in ’69 and ’70. I see it as a mental documentary of what it was to live back then. Such indirect or direct accounts always excite me and nostalgically take me back to places I never saw, memories I never had. Manos Hatzidakis gives me a similar feeling (ASXETO!)

I don’t know what it is in his writing, but Murakami-san can take me on a trip. His descriptions make sense. I connect with them in a way I just cannot with the works of a lot of other writers. I’m there. I smell the grass in the lush Japanese mountains and the cars’ fumes in dirty, crowded Tokyo. I taste the sake and the whiskey. I’m a voyeur in the sex scenes that are funny in their straight-forward explicitness. I care for the various tragic, funny or awkward characters. It makes sense that I do: I’ve got to know them. I grow attached to these living, breathing people that could easily be followers of a contemporary variety of the Tao of Zen.

So it also makes sense that I’m sick of them dying for no clear reason to me. What I can safely say is that, no matter if death at one’s own hands is a cornerstone of Japanese culture or that the protagonist considers that “death is not the opposite of life but an innate part of it”, I much prefer reading what Murakami has to say about life and love than about suicide.

Thank you Daphne for lending me Norwegian Wood.

PS: There’s a lot of ’60s music in this book and many characters playing well-known pieces on guitars and pianos. Here’s a little playlist I found that would do nicely as a companion soundtrack:

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EARWORM GARDEN // MAYBESHEWILL – NOT FOR WANT OF TRYING

Post-rock + apocalyptic images + Network (1976) = Ein Hit!

EDIT: I realised I’ve posted this track before in this post (A Collection of Great Depressing Music).

EARWORM GARDEN // MUSE — KNIGHTS OF CYDONIA

Youtube comment of the month: “Is that four Varys’ on the cover?”

Randomly started singing this today while changing trains in Thessaloniki. I remember a time when I was trying to learn the bass line to this. I still keep trying to sing the bass line.

EARWORM GARDEN // CHRISTOPHER TIN — HAF GENGR HRIÐUM

Also from Christopher Tin, also from The Drop That Contained The Sea. I told you that my favourite songs/earworms off albums tend to cycle. This one is in Old Norse:

lyrics

The sea, storm-driven,
Seeks heaven itself,
O’er the earth it flows,
the air grows sterile;
Then follows the snows,
and the furious winds
For the gods are doomed,
and the end is death.

Haf gengr hríðum
við himin sjalfan,
líðr lǫnd yfir,
en loft bilar;
þaðan koma snjóvar
ok snarir vindar;
þá er í ráði,
at rǫgn of þrjóti.

I can imagine this playing while the drakkars were crossing the Northern Atlantic for new shores… Brings chills up my spine.

Also reminds me of Liberi Fatali from FFVIII:

EARWORM GARDEN // THE PERFUME OST — THE CROWD EMBRACE

Haunting music. The scene where it plays during the film does give off masterfully the otherworldliness, the raw hit to the senses that are Grenouille’s perfumes. Here it is — it’s very close to the end of the film, so spoilers, obviously.

Tom Tykwer directed the film and he was in the composing team for the OST. Talk about a man of many talents. Between this and Lola Rennt, he’s made two of the films that rank very high in my list of favourites—as well as worked on their soundtracks.

Also, here’s my review for the book. If I had to choose between the book and the movie, I’d say “who’s to say we can’t enjoy them both?” As is the case with Game of Thrones, it’s one of these cases where book and visual representation each stands on its own merits. I haven’t actually read the GoT books because they’re stupidly long, I already know the main plot and people have told me that the series follows the books closely, but I’m sure that, in a parallel universe where I had read them, I wouldn’t regret it a bit and I’d try to convince my present-universe self to take the plunge. Still, I don’t feel inclined. Does that make sense?

EARWORM GARDEN // CHRISTOPHER TIN — TEMEN OBLAK

Christopher Tin. He’s the guy who composed Calling All Dawns, one of my favourite albums of all time and whose first track is Baba Yetu from Civilization IV, the song that was Tin’s claim to fame.

I was looking for an older post where I must have written something about Calling All Dawns but I could find nothing. Now’s the time then! What I adore about Tin’s music and what makes it unique is that every song is sung in a different language and has a different style. At the same time, however, it’s all miraculously held together by something as straightforward as a classical symphonic orchestra. I find this blend quite fresh and satisfying.

His new album, The Drop That Contained The Sea, another concept album of classical music mixed with ethnic, adds another level of metaphor by bringing in the circle of water. There are songs in Ancient Greek, Old Norse, Brazilian and other languages in there, some of which I don’t recognize. It’s quite good, almost as good as Calling All Dawns.

From the whole album, Темен Облак stands out for me (at least for now, because my favourite songs from individual albums tend to go through circles). It’s in Bulgarian which is a heavy bonus, but anyway I find it incredibly powerful! Lots of choir or vocal-heavy songs are dominating my earworm garden lately.

EARWORM GARDEN // IN THE HALLS OF THE USURPER — SHOVEL KNIGHT

Yes, Shovel Knight is every single bit as good as it’s said to be—all eight of them. The little detail that makes me feel all cozy and warm inside? You can change the language in-game.

INTERSTELLAR

Watched this movie with Daphne in Aello a few days ago (Wednesdays and Thursdays it’s two tickets in the price of one, check it). Generally I don’t do film reviews unless I feel like I have a very specific thing to say, so in this case I’m not going to write one, because this movie didn’t leave me with any feeling in particular apart from “meh, Nolan’s making progressively less interesting films based on more and more interesting concepts.” And to think he used to be one of my favourite directors… The final scene in particular…

Spoiler

An American flag? Really? Is that what it’s all about?

Um…

Some more spoilers, just in case

The wormhole scene was amazing. I also liked the two astronauts duking it out on Hoth 2.0 in a galaxy far far away. Those were probably my favourite scenes. The whole 5th dimension thing, however, while incredibly fascinating in theory, was in my opinion executed poorly, as was part of the story on Earth, which should have shown more of what had happened on our planet. But I’m not feeling like saying too much about it right now.

The soundtrack was pretty good. Have it play in the background and make your day a little bit more transcendent/epic/worthy of a Nolan movie.

Two reviews of the movie that mentioned some of my other unpindownable quotes of Intersteallar:

TO THE MOON REVIEW

Got this from some gog.com sale and left it unplayed for much too long like most games bought in truckloads for cheap, which is the fashionable way of purchasing fresh electronic entertainment, at the very least for the PC.

In a way, it’s quite incredible that this piece of work managed to become as famous as it has. It was declared indie RPG of 2011 (released exactly three years ago, hm), won Gamespot’s Award for Best Story of the same year, has appeared in Humble Bundle, GoG and other services and generally… it’s been talked about a lot.

Why is it incredible? The game has the feeling it could have been a university project made by an undergraduate in game design. It’s very indie, and not in the hipster sense, as is for example Sword and Sworcery EP–it’s the b-movie kind of indie. The characters are indie. The story is indie. The gameplay is… yep, indie, in the sense that there’s very little of it, which seems to be a respectable, if not slightly self-defeating, trend within the bounds of the independent gaming scene. To be honest, this game is not an RPG in any way, even if it was made in RPG Maker XP and somehow won the award for the genre in 2011. Scratch that: To The Moon is hardly a game at all. That said, perhaps the mere fact is its greatest strength.

What I enjoyed:

• the plot reminded me of and was obviously inspired by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which happens to be one of my favourite movies ever: one part science fiction, two parts emotion, half a part (or so) quirk;
• it was short: in a world where story-driven games are typically much longer than your average novel but rarely pack even half the punch, To The Moon kept it short and sweet;
• the original soundtrack: probably what To The Moon became most well-known for, this game is quite a unique case in that one of the composers was its director as well (Kan Gao)–that’s some auteurship right there (music sample);
•that 16-bit style reminded me of all the similar games I never finished–looking at you, FF6 and Chrono Trigger… will I ever know if their endings were any good?
• “Every star is a lighthouse…” That was a beautiful image.

What I didn’t enjoy:

• the humour! Too millennially, too redditty. Don’t get me wrong, I can enjoy my lolcats, sure, but you can actually be funny without resorting to memes and gaming pop culture all the time;
• gimmicky gameplay, or what little there is of it: maybe it would have been better as a visual novel;
• the plot was basically animé melodrama; okay, it’s an interesting foray for the medium, but really… I mean [SPOILERS], only in anime do you have these life-long relationships that begin in early childhood;
•the characters: they didn’t do it for me; it was more about the situations;
•ending: see above. I can’t think of a single anime movie or series that a had a satisfying ending. Yes, it was sad and apparently it made a lot of grown men cry, but… but!

What I will remember:

• how it made me feel about my own childhood and lack of… well…
• the portrayal of memory links: it was annoying to play through but it was an interesting idea;

Age timeline: an interesting pseudo-mechanic

I would recommend it to everyone who:

• is interested in what else games can be today, what the next frontier for the medium could be. In other words, a game doesn’t need to be a game. Hell, we don’t even have the necessary vocabulary for all this yet!
• thinks that one has to be a genius at programming and/or art to make his or her own game; no, people: all it takes is an idea or a message one feels the need to express, a basic tool and dedication; then it might go on to become a success out of nowhere, who knows? Again, this could have been a university project!

REVIEW: JOURNEY OF SOULS

Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives by Michael Newton

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I believe in reincarnation. There are just too many things going on out there that are inexplicable if you rule out survival of consciousness. And if this book is legitimate, which from the look of it it is, Journey of Souls only adds to the mystery.

A quick word on whether this book is substantial proof for the existence of reincarnation: if you don’t believe in this kind of thing, this book won’t rid you of your skepticism. It’s like the forever-discussed “proof” of the existence of God or not. Atheists would never accept or even recognize “proof” for the existence of God. If you are one yourself, sit down and think what kind of proof would be enough to convince you that God exists, and what other atheists would have to say on the matter. To be fair, respective theists would never accept the proposition that such a thing as proof is in fact necessary, either. Not when faith is the cornerstone of religions in general.

Back to the book. If you’ve ever heard of past life regression through hypnosis, Michael Newton is the guy who apparently first used and popularised the technique.

Nature or nurture? Just your soul feeling adventurous, silly!

To tell you the truth, I imagined it to be better when I downloaded it for my Kindle. In the first paragraph of this review, I mentioned that the book only adds to the mystery. Big time it does: I came out of it more puzzled than enlightened. I disliked some of the questions he asked his hypnotised clients, and the whole after-/before-life system assembled by the info gathered from the tens (hundreds?) of cases used for the book seemed to me too anthropocentric, too much of the existing material world. Apparently there are levels of soul maturity, as well as soul “schools” and soul nurseries or, for lack of a better term, tribes.

Then again, if Journey of Souls reflects what’s actually happening at all, that would mean that it is actually the the human condition that reflects the way things are in the spirit world, not the other way around. It seems plausible; people are souls in meat suits. You don’t stop being a person when you drive a car, do you? Or maybe you become an “enhanced” person given a tool that expands your possibilities. I can see a similar reason for souls wanting to incarnate and indeed, such reasoning is given in the book.

At the end of the day, you can only know for sure if you’ve had a past life regression yourself. Maybe that’s the only way for any of us to be convinced that death is not the end, and maybe only then can we obtain the knowledge we can actually do something with in order to change our lives for the better. Anything else is so many steps removed it’s like reading sex stories expecting to feel what an orgasm feels like second-hand. Errr, I mean… What was I saying before ? Yes; at the very least, if Mr. Newton’s goal was to make me want to be hypnotised to find out my spiritual past, he got that part right.

So what do you say? Is the truth out there or in here?

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